Over the past year, the Institute continued on its path of transforming itself into a multidisciplinary institution, building on its strong foundation in Education-related areas, and the consolidation of additional complementary discipline areas in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Creative Arts and Culture. Advancing the “Education-plus” vision, these transformational efforts worked in tandem with a strengthening of teaching and research, underpinned by committed staff who workin unison to create synergy between teaching, learning and research.

The Institute is keen to nurture students as global citizens who have the passion for teaching and are professionally ready to be the agents of change in schools and the community.

In 2010-11, the Institute offered 49 University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded and self-financed programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The wide array of discipline areas adds value to and complements the Institute’s core Education programmes while addressing the evolving needs of society.

The undergraduate years are the first step in the direction of an initial career choice and an enriched and deeper experience of general education. These years forming a coherent set of learning experiences in a chosen discipline area also provide the foundation for future postgraduate studies. With this multiple positioning of undergraduate education in mind, the Institute is committed to creating an academic environment and curriculum to ensure that the undergraduate experience will enable individual students to reach their self-actualisation and social goals.

Under this concept, the newly configured five-year Bachelor of Education (Honours) programmes and the four-year non-Education general degree programmes share a common curriculum framework characterised by greater choices and different learning pathways with both breadth and depth in their learning, as well as local, regional and international dimensions, meeting the needs of contemporary society in the era of globalisation and the knowledge revolution.

Further to launching the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Language Studies and Bachelor of Social Sciences (Honours) in Global and Environmental Studies, the Institute will be offering its third UGC-funded programme, the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Creative Arts and Culture, in 2011-12. The programme will aim at preparing students to be community-based artists who are able to work across a range of established art forms and advance the arts and arts education in the local, regional and international cultural and creative industries.

On the core Education front, the Institute has developed cross-sectoral Bachelor of Education programmes covering four majors, Chinese Language, Music, Physical Education and Visual Arts, to be offered in 2011-12. This initiative is intended to equip our students with professional knowledge and experience in teaching at both primary and secondary schools while maintaining a central focus on the sector in which they aspire to teach. This innovative arrangement will not only enable our students to understand more thoroughly the requirements of and cognitive development needed in their studies, but will also provide them with a more integrated education experience.

The Institute has also introduced other self-financed programmes that are strongly linked to Education. The Bachelor of Music in Education (Honours) (Contemporary Music and Performance Pedagogy) and Bachelor of Health Education (Honours) programmes are designed to nurture community musicians and cultivate teachers, school nurses and social workers with substantial educational skills and knowledge to serve beyond conventional school settings. Self-financed programmes preparing educators and trainers in other fields to be launched in 2011-12 include Greater China Studies, Web Technology, Sports Science and Liberal Studies Education.

The Institute is further expanding its contribution to enhancing the leadership and professional capacities of the teaching and related professions through its postgraduate programmes. Taught Master’s programmes, including the Master of Education, Master of Arts and Master of Social Science Education, are designed for educators, trainers and professionals in educational and related settings, with the aim of developing their professional knowledge and competence to meet emerging demands and challenges locally and internationally. These programmes cover a wide range of specialisations in educational studies (e.g. language education, early childhood education, mathematics education, science education, curriculum and innovative teaching, special education, educational and developmental psychology, etc.), linguistics and communication sciences, music education and contemporary studio art, ethnicity and global citizenship, and Greater China studies. Professional doctorates extend the training to include the systematic and critical investigation of educational practices, processes or policies, in the form of a dissertation. The Institute also offers an International Executive Master of Arts (IEMA) degree for educational leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the launch of the UGC-funded Research Postgraduate programme, the first cohort of research students have finished their taught courses and are now commencing their work on research theses. The Institute will also see its first batch of students in the Doctor of Education programme completing their dissertations in the coming months.

The Institute adheres to the fundamental value of using high-quality research to inform innovation in learning, teaching and curriculum development, and to support professional practice, policy discourse and social and human development. Key research outputs of Institute staff are used as required materials to enhance learning and teaching at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Through the Institute Library’s HKIEd Research Repository and its Hong Kong Education Bibliographic Database launched in January 2011, research outputs are now easily accessible online to inform learning, teaching and research development.

Focused research areas underpinned by a critical mass of active researchers led by renowned scholars are pertinent to a quality teaching and learning environment. The five Institute-level Research Centres and ten Faculty-level Research and Development Centres continue to advance cutting-edge multidisciplinary knowledge in diverse areas strategic to education and the community in Hong Kong and the region, such as leadership and change, assessment and measurement, linguistics and language information science, governance and citizenship, language education and acquisition in multilingual societies, lifelong learning and international education, and Greater China studies.

The Institute also bolsters its research culture through a holistic approach of capacity building of Institute staff at various levels. At the Faculty and Department levels, team spirit in research is fostered through well-established researchers taking the lead in promoting a nexus between teaching and research. At the Institute level, the overall academic capacity and research leadership are strengthened through global strategic recruitment of Chair Professors and Professors, and the development of research postgraduate education. The work on these fronts has borne fruit, supporting and informing learning and teaching, and creating a vibrant research culture and growing research capacity across the Institute.

Our internationally renowned academic leaders and major grant holders form a pool of supervisors for research students. They provide supervision on a wide range of educational and related areas, offering quality team-approach supervision to research students and mentorship to less experienced researchers.

Each of our research degree students is affiliated with an Institute- or Faculty-level Research Centre so that his or her research capacity development can benefit from considerable exposure to multidisciplinary research activities and experiences locally and internationally. With over 200 ongoing research projects in different areas of education and related disciplines, they provide excellent opportunities for students to participate in scholarly activities and share first-hand experiences and insights that are crucial to the development of their research competence and horizons.

The overall progress made in the last few years has set the Institute firmly on the path of transformation into an Education-focused multidisciplinary institution, strong in research and research training. The changes enable the Institute to play an active role in knowledge creation and knowledge transfer, where distinguished scholars and experts are working together to foster a culture conducive to the pursuit of Great Learning, growth in Intellectual Diversity and dynamism in Free Thinking.